Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Vineland Estates Wine Tasting at Opus Restaurant

In late-November, I was invited by Halpern Enterprises to an exclusive tasting of Vineland Estates wines at the elegant Opus Restaurant in the Bloor-Yorkville Area in downtown Toronto.

It was a small-ish tasting, featuring 13 wines from their Classic, Elevation, and Reserve Series, with a focus more on licensees as most of the wines presented were only available for purchase direct through the winery (or the Agent).

Vineland Estates is located on the Niagara Escarpment and has been elevating the wine and culinary experience for over 30 years. The site features some very old structures, including the landmark stone tower that stands over a former Mennonite homestead with structures that date back to the 1840s. These structures now encompass a restaurant, retail store and wine tasting bar, underground barrel cellar, and the Carriage House that's used for private events. I have personally visited the winery quite a few times and have also enjoyed dinners at their restaurant.

In more recent news, the winery acquired a high-tech optical sorter to help produce better wines, in particular Cabernet Sauvignon. This grape requires a very long growing season to fully ripen, and is quite difficult to achieve full ripeness in the cool-climate region of Niagara. Every harvest produces exceptional grapes in all varieties, but the challenge is to find the best grapes out of the hundreds (or thousands) of tonnes that are produced. This cutting edge device optically sorts each individual grape according to ripeness levels at a rate of 10 tonnes per hour and discards the grapes that don't meet requirements. Vineland Estates' winemaker Brian Schmidt calls this technology a "game changer", and I fully expect an increase in quality in their wines going forward. Their "Game Changer" Red and White wines are made in reference to this technology.

Wine reviews of my 5 favourite wines from this tasting are provided below, a couple of which are available at the LCBO.